How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!"
These words [Lady Dedlock] uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no, no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only natural moments of her life. (36.36-37)
So Shmoop has read a bunch of Dickens's other novels, and it's a little weird that Lady Dedlock's guilt comes out as a fear that Esther will touch her. Why is it weird? Because in several of the other novels, the women who don't want to be touched when they are feeling guilty are prostitutes (see Little Dorrit for example, or Oliver Twist).
Quote #8
I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do something I asked, and he looked ashamed. [...] must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." (38.68-70)
Why is Guppy so terrified that Esther might insist on their engagement? Well, back then engagements were legally binding, and men who broke them off could be sued for damages. The idea was to prevent guys from getting engaged, sleeping with their fiancées, then running off leaving behind what Victorians considered damaged goods. Yeah, double yuck.
Quote #9
Jo is brought in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery and stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity. (47.39-40)
There is a nice contrast here. The narrator spends a lot of time describing Jo like something you could buy from a store – he's an "article" (meaning a piece of goods), he's "home-made", everything about him is "homely" (meaning "from home" back then, not ugly). Or maybe he's like a zoo exhibit – "lower than beasts," "grown on English soil." But a beat later, Jo feels guilty for infecting Charley and then Esther with his contagious fever. In our eyes, this restores his humanity, but in his eyes his crime makes him lower than animals.